AppFolio Vision: Rental Applications and Screening
Problem
The Rental Applications and Screening product group had little strategy or direction. Teams were focused on the tactical day-to-day, with no North Star to guide or energize the teams.
Process
I organized a cross-functional kickoff workshop to ensure buy-in and alignment on vision scope. I guided my UX team through design ideation and check-ins with each other and our cross-functional stakeholders. I held the team to a high bar for visual quality, and led them through creating an effective shareout of their work.
Impact
The vision work energized and evangelized our 30-person cross-functional product group. Excited leaders pointed to our vision work as an example for other teams to follow. The compelling vision resulted in 2 of 4 aspects being directly prioritized in 2026.
Workshop
I organized a 2-day cross-functional workshop that started with lightning talks from 20 speakers from stakeholder teams: some in product development, others from functions like customer success and onboarding. These talks covered team priorities, known issues, and challenges that intersected our team’s scope. During the lightning talks, participants collected “how might we” stickies in FigJam and we followed up with dot-votting to identify top opportunity areas. 4 themes emerged from these opportunity areas: Flexible Screening, Applicant Experiences, Automation and Performers, and Communication and Confidence. Participants were split into 4 groups to write a vision statement for each theme, and storyboard what achieving that vision statement would look like.
Team design ideation
The team used the storyboards to identify new or existing areas that would need to be designed to achieve the vision, and I distributed those areas of responsibility across the team to divide and conquer, and give each individual a sense of ownership over a piece of the vision.
The team leveraged AI prototyping tools including FigmaMake, Google Stitch, and v0 to rapidly generate multiple ideas.
I scheduled regular check-ins for the team, both for design critique with each other, and with cross-functional stakeholders to keep them invested in and informed of our progress.
User Research
As the team narrowed in on designs, I directed them to create contrasting concepts to test with users. Our team worked together to test the applicant-facing concepts with 5 applicants, and the property manager facing concepts with 5 property managers.
The team used Gemini functionality in Google Sheets to help summarize findings, completing research and analysis for 2 user types in under 1 week. We collaborated on creating a readout deck and hosted a readout with cross-functional stakeholders to help them understand user perception and desires.
Outcomes and impact
Rather than working within an existing design system in need of a visual overhaul, I helped the team create a quick, scrappy component library to enable our vision to have a cohesive look, but with a much higher level of visual quality.
I created a venue for the team to present their work to senior product and UX leaders, as well as ensure they had an opportunity to share it our with our entire cross-functional team.
The vision work energized and evangelized our 30-person cross-functional product group. Excited leaders pointed to our vision work as an example for other teams to follow. The compelling vision resulted in 2 of 4 aspects being directly prioritized in 2026.
